Somatized or stigma? Causal attributions and emotional responses in shaping social distance towards people with mental illness, China.

Background: Mental illness in China has traditionally been attributed to physical factors and somatization tendencies, which seldom result in stigma. How has this perception changed after decades of social change? Methods: Based on the Chinese General Social Survey database in 2011, this study constructed a structural equation model to analyze the effects of causal attribution and emotional responses on social distance. The causal attributions include dangerousness, controllability, and responsibility. And the emotional responses encompass negative affect, traditional prejudice, treatment carryover, and exclusionary sentiments. In addition, higher scores indicating greater social distance, whereas a low score reflected stronger emotional responses or a greater degree of internal attribution. Results: The results reported a high level of social distance towards people with mental illness. These findings indicated that emotional responses have a direct impact on social distance. Specifically, when negative affect, traditional prejudice, and exclusionary sentiments increase by one standard deviation, the social distance decreases by 0.497, 0.178, and 0.073 standard deviation, respectively. Conversely, as the level of treatment carryover rises, social distance increases by 0.087. Meanwhile, the causal attribution only exerts a significant indirect effect on social distance by the function of emotional causal responses. Conclusion: The results indicated that the public attributes mental illnesses like depression primarily to psychological issues rather than somatic ones. It suggested widespread stereotypes and public stigma towards people with mental illness in China, as well as an arduous task in anti-stigma. In addition, a targeted way to address public stigma lies in changing the stereotype of people with mental illness.

Mindful Parenting as a Mediator in Parents' Perspective-Taking: Exploring the Roles of Causal Attribution and Self-Compassion.

Background: Existing literature has examined the link between parent causal attribution and self-compassion in parent perspective-taking, but the impact of mindful parenting as a mediator remains underexplored. Purpose: The present study examines the mediating effect of mindful parenting on the relationship between parental attribution and self-compassion in parents' perspective-taking. Methods: Using a cross-sectional design, 208 parents aged 30 to 59 (M = 42, SD = 4.3) with first-born adolescents aged 12-18 participated in the study. Results: The results revealed that mindful parenting fully mediated the relationship between parental causal attribution and perspective-taking while partially mediating the association between self-compassion and perspective-taking. Conclusion: These findings emphasize the crucial role of mindful parenting in explaining the relationship between parent causal attribution, self-compassion, and parent perspective-taking. Further research is needed to explore these relationships in more diverse and representative samples.

Computational Social Psychology.

Social psychologists attempt to explain how we interact by appealing to basic principles of how we think. To make good on this ambition, they are increasingly relying on an interconnected set of formal tools that model inference, attribution, value-guided decision making, and multi-agent interactions. By reviewing progress in each of these areas and highlighting the connections between them, we can better appreciate the structure of social thought and behavior, while also coming to understand when, why, and how formal tools can be useful for social psychologists.

Psychological distress and the belief that oral behaviours put a strain on the masticatory system in relation to the self-report of awake bruxism: Four scenarios.

BACKGROUND: It is assumed that other factors than masticatory muscle activity awareness could drive the self-report of awake bruxism. OBJECTIVES: To investigate the extent to which the report of awake bruxism is associated with psychological distress, and with the belief that oral behaviours put a strain on the masticatory system among TMD-pain patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study sample consisted of 1830 adult patients with reported function-dependent TMD pain. Awake bruxism was assessed through six items of the Oral Behaviors Checklist. Psychological distress was assessed by means of somatic symptoms, depression and anxiety. Causal attribution belief was measured with the question 'Do you think these behaviours put a strain on your jaws, jaw muscles, and/or teeth?' RESULTS: Mean age of all participants was 42.8 (±15.2) years, 78.2% being female. Controlled for sex, positive, yet weak, correlations were found between awake bruxism and somatic symptom severity (rs = 0.258; p < .001), depression (rs = 0.272; p < .001) and anxiety (rs = 0.314; p < .001): patients with the highest scores reported approximately twice as much awake bruxism compared to those with minimal scores. Controlled for age and sex, a positive, moderate correlation was found between awake bruxism and causal attribution belief (rs = 0.538; p < .001). Patients who believed that performing awake oral behaviours put 'very much' a strain on the masticatory system reported four times more awake bruxism than patients who did not believe that these behaviours are harmful. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the results and relevant scientific literature, the theoretical background mechanisms of our findings are discussed in four scenarios that are either in favour of the use of self-report of awake bruxism being a representation of masticatory muscle activity awareness, or against it.

I am not the cause of this pain: An experimental study of the cognitive processes underlying causal attribution in the unpredictable situation whether negative outcomes.

OBJECTIVES: Pain causal attribution is the attribution of pain causes to self or others, which may depend on one's choice of actions. The study aimed to examine how the cognitive processes of pain causal attribution as one aspect of the sense of agency change in healthy individuals based on free or forced choice, using a temporal binding (TB) experimental task. METHODS: Participants pressed keys (action) in a combined TB task, with one key having a high probability of delivering pain (with tone). In fact, only the bias between the free-choice and the forced choice conditions was manipulated. Participants estimated the time between their action and tone, with shorter intervals indicating internal attribution. RESULTS: Interval estimation was significantly longer in the forced-choice condition than in the free-choice condition when a pain stimulus was delivered. CONCLUSIONS: Explicit complaints of pain being caused by others may be represented in implicit cognitive processes.

Blame and Praise cross-culturally: An fMRI investigation into causal attribution and moral judgment.

People from independent cultures are more likely to causally explain others' behaviors by their disposition [vs. situation] compared to those from interdependent cultures. However, few studies have directly examined how these differences in attribution shape individuals' moral judgment, nor the underlying neural mechanisms of this process. Aiming to address these questions, in the scanner, participants rated the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of protagonists who did either a negative or positive behavior, respectively. These behaviors were pretested and found to be perceived as dispositionally or situationally caused to different extents on average. Regardless of their self-construal, participants showed enhanced dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) activity in response to the behaviors that were evaluated as more situationally caused on average. Importantly, relatively independent participants reduced their blame for the behaviors that they showed greater dmPFC activity to. Relatively interdependent participants reduced blame for the behaviors that they themselves inferred more situational causes for, but dmPFC activity did not explain their blame. These findings suggest that while dmPFC might support relatively independent participants' effortful consideration of situational contributors to a behavior to make moral judgments, relatively interdependent participants might engage in this process automatically and relied less on dmPFC recruitment.

Asymmetric Causal Attributions to Environmental Influences for Prosocial Versus Antisocial Behavior.

Several recent studies have explored how people may favor different explanations for others' behavior depending on the moral or evaluative valence of the behavior in question. This research tested whether people would be less willing to believe that a person's environment played a role in causing her to exhibit antisocial (as compared to prosocial) behavior. In three experiments, participants read a description of a person engaging in either antisocial or prosocial behavior. Participants were less willing to endorse environmental causes of antisocial (versus prosocial) behavior when the environmental influence in question was witnessing others behaving similarly, either during childhood (Experiment 1) or recently (Experiment 2), or being directly encouraged by others to engage in the behavior described (Experiment 3). These results could be relevant to understanding why people resist attributing wrongdoing to causes outside of individual control in some cases.

Does believing something to be fiction allow a form of moral licencing or a 'fictive pass' in understanding others' actions?

Introduction: The human capacity to engage with fictional worlds raises important psychological questions about the mechanisms that make this possible. Of particular interest is whether people respond differently to fictional stories compared to factual ones in terms of how immersed they become and how they view the characters involved and their actions. It has been suggested that fiction provides us with a 'fictive pass' that allows us to evaluate in a more balanced, detached way the morality of a character's behaviour. Methods: We use a randomised controlled experimental design to test this. Results and discussion: We show that, although knowing whether a substantial film clip is fact or fiction does not affect how engaged with ('transported' by) a troubling story an observer becomes, it does grant them a 'fictive pass' to empathise with a moral transgressor. However, a fictive pass does not override the capacity to judge the causes of a character's moral transgression (at least as indexed by a causal attribution task).

Inclusive leadership and voice behavior: The role of psychological empowerment.

Although there have been studies in the past that have highlighted the important role of leadership in motivating employees to speak up, relational leadership has been scarcely investigated in this context. Therefore, the current research investigates the relationship between inclusive leadership, as a form of relational leadership, and employees' voice behavior directly and indirectly via psychological empowerment. Using the data collected from 252 employees and their respective supervisors working in cargo companies across the United Kingdom, this study finds a positive relationship between inclusive leadership and voice behavior. The results further confirm the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the relationship between inclusive leadership and voice behavior. We use causal attribution theory to support the findings and discuss implications for research and practice.

Learned helplessness revisited: biased evaluation of goals and action potential are major risk factors for emotional disturbance.

The present theory section deals with learned helplessness produced by pervasive experiences of failure or negative events, leading to decreased motivation and risk for depression. In their target article, Boddez, van Dessel, and de Houwer apply this concept to different forms of psychological suffering and propose a goal-directed mechanism -generalisation over similar goals. Duda and Joormann define goal similarity by action-outcome contingencies and highlight individual differences in attribution styles. Brandstätter proposes incentive classes as the organising principle for goal similarity and explores outcomes such as deterioration of cognitive ability. Mikulincer and Lifshin focus on differences between goals and introduce the notion of motivated helplessness, serving as an anxiety buffer in uncontrollable life settings. Finally, potential contributions from emotion science are outlined, in particular individual differences and biases in appraising goals and coping potential likely to produce negative emotion dispositions. In conclusion, the need to elaborate a more comprehensive theoretical framework for helplessness that can guide empirical studies using multifactorial and longitudinal designs is emphasised. Given the strong increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide, better understanding of predispositions and eliciting factors is needed for early diagnosis and the development of intervention programmes to reduce psychological suffering.

Entrepreneurship education of college students and entrepreneurial psychology of new entrepreneurs under causal attribution theory.

With the rapid development of information technology, the society's demand for innovative talents has become increasingly prominent. The purpose of this study is to optimize the teaching strategies of entrepreneurship education for college students, further cultivate college students' entrepreneurial ideas, and promote the formation of entrepreneurial values. The problems existing in entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities are studied based on entrepreneurial psychology and attribution theory. A questionnaire survey is conducted on the problems with a high probability of entrepreneurial failure of college students. The heads of new ventures in Xi'an are selected. Then, 300 questionnaires are distributed, and 209 are returned. The survey results are analyzed using failure attribution and failure learning. Suggestions are provided for management strategies of new ventures. The results show that the Corrected Item-Total Correlation (CITC) value of R-1 is 0.65, and the CITC value of R-2 is 0.35. In addition, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) values of entrepreneurial failure attribution and entrepreneurial failure mode are both greater than 0.7, which indicates that the scale of entrepreneurial failure attribution has good validity and can be used for factor analysis. However, the KMO values of entrepreneurial failure attribution and entrepreneurial failure learning model are both greater than 0.7, and the significance of Bartlett sphericity test is 0.00, which indicates that the survey has good validity. The research has practical application and reference value for the cultivation of college students' innovative and entrepreneurial ability.

Asymmetrical genetic attributions for the presence and absence of health problems.

OBJECTIVE: Recent research has suggested that people more readily make genetic attributions for positively valenced or desirable traits than for negatively valenced or undesirable traits-an asymmetry that may be mediated by perceptions that positive characteristics are more 'natural' than negative ones. This research sought to examine whether a similar asymmetry in genetic attributions would emerge between positive and negative health outcomes. DESIGN: Across seven experiments, participants were randomly assigned to read a short vignette describing an individual experiencing a health problem (e.g. hypertension) or a corresponding healthy state (e.g. normal blood pressure). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: All participants provided ratings of naturalness and genetic attributions for the outcome described in their assigned vignette. RESULTS: For diagnoses other than addictive disorders, participants rated the presence of a diagnosis as less genetically caused than its absence; for addictive disorders, the presence of a diagnosis was rated as more genetically caused than its absence. Participants consistently rated the presence of a health problem as less natural than its absence. CONCLUSION: Even within a single domain of health, people ascribe differing degrees of 'naturalness' and genetic causation to positive versus negative health outcomes, which could impact their preferences for treatment and prevention strategies.

Approach with initiative or hold on passively? The impact of customer-perceived dependence on customer forgiveness in service failure.

Service failure is almost inevitable with the intensifying competition in the service market and expectation of heterogeneous customers. The customer-firm relationship can significantly influence customers' subsequent attitudes and behaviors to the service provider when they encounter service failure. This study proposes a theoretical model to examine how customer-perceived dependence affects their forgiveness toward a service failure in attribution logic. According to an experiment with 138 and a survey with 428 commercial bank customers, we used a multivariate approach to validate our model. The results show that relationship-valued dependence (RVD) leads to external attribution, which is positively related to customer forgiveness. In contrast, switching-cost dependence (SCD) leads to internal attribution, which is negatively related to customer forgiveness. The relationship length is a relevant contextual factor that acts as a negative moderating factor. Our study contributes to the service recovery literature by elucidating the underlying process of forgiveness with the presence of the customer-firm dependence relationship.

Challenges to reasoning in forensic science decisions.

The success of forensic science depends heavily on human reasoning abilities. Although we typically navigate our lives well using those abilities, decades of psychological science research shows that human reasoning is not always rational. In addition, forensic science often demands that its practitioners reason in non-natural ways. This article addresses how characteristics of human reasoning (either specific to an individual or in general) and characteristics of situations (either specific to a case or in general in a lab) can contribute to errors before, during, or after forensic analyses. In feature comparison judgments, such as fingerprints or firearms, a main challenge is to avoid biases from extraneous knowledge or arising from the comparison method itself. In causal and process judgments, for example fire scenes or pathology, a main challenge is to keep multiple potential hypotheses open as the investigation continues. Considering the contributions to forensic science judgments by persons, situations, and their interaction, reveals ways to develop procedures to decrease errors and improve accuracy.

Reproduction and genetic causal attribution of epilepsy.

OBJECTIVE: This study addresses the contribution of genetics-related concerns to reduced childbearing among people with epilepsy. METHODS: Surveys were completed by 606 adult patients with epilepsy of unknown cause at our medical center. Poisson regression analysis was used to assess the relations of number of offspring to: (1) genetic attribution (GA: participants' belief that genetics was a cause of their epilepsy), assessed via a novel scale developed from four survey items (Cronbach's alpha = .89), (2) participants' estimates of epilepsy risk in the child of a parent with epilepsy (1%, 5%-10%, 25%, and 50%-100%), and (3) participants' reports of the influence on their reproductive decisions of "the chance of having a child with epilepsy" (none/weak/moderate, strong/very strong). Analyses were adjusted for age, education, race/ethnicity, religion, type of epilepsy (generalized, focal, and both/unclassifiable), and age at epilepsy onset (<10, 10-19, and ≥20 years). RESULTS: Among participants 18-45 years of age, the number of offspring decreased significantly with increasing GA (highest vs lowest GA quartile rate ratio [RR] = .5, p < .001), and increasing estimated epilepsy risk in offspring (with 5%-10% as referent because it is closest to the true value, RR for 25%: .7, p = .05; RR for 50%-100%: .6, p = .03). Number of offspring was not related to the reported influence of "the chance of having a child with epilepsy" on reproductive decisions. Among participants >45 years of age, the number of offspring did not differ significantly according to GA quartile or estimated offspring epilepsy risk. However, those reporting a strong/very strong influence on their reproductive decisions of "the chance of having a child with epilepsy" had only 60% as many offspring as others. SIGNIFICANCE: These findings suggest that overestimating the risk of epilepsy in offspring can have important consequences for people with epilepsy. Patient and provider education about recurrence risks and genetic testing options to clarify risks are critical, given their potential influence on reproductive decisions.

Social control and solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic: The direct and indirect effects of causal attribution of insufficient compliance through perceived anomie.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis which called for two crucial modes of social regulation: social control and social solidarity. In the present pre-registered study, we examine how the perceived non-compliance with health measures relates to attitudes towards these modes of social regulation, as well as to the role played by the perception of disintegrated and disregulated society (anomie). Using data from an online cross-sectional survey conducted in Belgium in April 2020 (N = 717), results show that the causal attribution of the crisis to insufficient compliance was differentially associated with support for social control and social solidarity behaviours. Specifically, greater attribution to insufficient compliance was associated with a perceived breakdown in the social fabric (disintegration), which explained stronger support for social control and fewer solidarity-based actions. Perceived disregulation, conversely, was associated with less support for social control and more support for social solidarity. Therefore, the perception of the pandemic and associated perceived anomie tend to polarize citizens' attitudes towards these two modes of social regulation. In this way, prosocial behaviours might be inhibited by communications that attribute the pandemic's causes to incivility. Other implications of our findings for the social psychological literature on communities' reactions to the pandemic are discussed. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

The Path of College Students' Entrepreneurship Education Under Causal Attribution Theory From the Perspective of Entrepreneurial Psychology.

The purpose of the study is to promote college students to actively respond to the national "Public Entrepreneurship and Mass Innovation" policies and calls, improve college students' entrepreneurial enthusiasm and their entrepreneurial ability, and cultivate their good entrepreneurial psychological states. First, the relevant content of entrepreneurship psychology and causal attribution theory is displayed. Second, the questionnaire of college students' entrepreneurship education is formulated and a questionnaire survey is conducted on University N based on the relevant content of entrepreneurship psychology. Subsequently, the management system of new venture A is taken as the research object to construct the management strategy of new ventures and simulate the implementation process. Finally, the questionnaire survey results of college students' entrepreneurship education are analyzed and the corresponding entrepreneurship education path is formulated. Meanwhile, the implementation effect of the management strategy of new ventures is evaluated. After the questionnaire is sorted out, it is found that there are some problems in college students' entrepreneurship education, such as weak awareness of entrepreneurship, insufficient publicity, outdated curriculum, and unqualified teachers. The reasons for these problems are the constraints of traditional concepts, insufficient attention, and incomplete system construction. Therefore, a plan is made for overall entrepreneurship education, the publicity of the concept of entrepreneurship education is strengthened, and the setting of entrepreneurship education curriculum and the ability of the teachers for entrepreneurship education are improved. Through the evaluation of the simulation implementation of a new enterprise management strategy, it is found that the new management strategy can achieve the expected effect. Therefore, this study provides some references for the development of college students' entrepreneurship education and the management strategy of new ventures.

Why Is Murat's Achievement So Low? Causal Attributions and Implicit Attitudes Toward Ethnic Minority Students Predict Preservice Teachers' Judgments About Achievement.

In many educational systems, ethnic minority students score lower in their academic achievement, and consequently, teachers develop low expectations regarding this student group. Relatedly, teachers' implicit attitudes, explicit expectations, and causal attributions also differ between ethnic minority and ethnic majority students-all in a disadvantageous way for ethnic minority students. However, what is not known so far, is how attitudes and causal attributions contribute together to teachers' judgments. In the current study, we explored how implicit attitudes and causal attributions contribute to preservice teachers' judgments of the low educational success of an ethnic minority student. Results showed that both implicit attitudes and causal attributions predicted language proficiency and intelligence judgments. Negative implicit attitudes, assessed with the IRAP, and internal stable causal attributions led to lower judgments of language proficiency, whereas lower judgments of intelligence were predicted by positive implicit attitudes and higher judgments of intelligence by external stable attributions. Substantial differences in the prediction of judgments could be found between the IRAP and BIAT as measures of implicit attitudes.

Asymmetric genetic attributions for one's own prosocial versus antisocial behavior.

People tend to rate prosocial or positive behavior as more strongly influenced by the actor's genes than antisocial or negative behavior. The current study tested whether people would show a similar asymmetry when rating the role of genes in their own behavior, and if so, what variables might mediate this difference. Participants were prompted to think about an example of their own behavior from the past year that was either prosocial or antisocial. Those in the prosocial condition rated the role of genetics in causing the behavior as significantly greater than did those in the antisocial condition. A mediation analysis suggested that this asymmetry could be accounted for by a tendency to view prosocial behavior as more natural and more aligned with one's true self than antisocial behavior. These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that people's reasoning about genetics may be influenced by evaluative judgments.

When people are defeated by artificial intelligence in a competition task requiring logical thinking, how do they make causal attribution?

Given that artificial intelligence (AI) has been predicted to eventually take on human tasks demanding logical thinking, it makes sense that we should examine psychological responses of humans when their performance is inferior to AI. Research has demonstrated that after people fail a task, whether they reorient their behavior towards success depends on what they attribute the failure to. This study investigated the causal attributions people made in a competition task requiring such thinking. We also recorded whether they wanted to re-challenge the games after they were defeated by AI. Experiments 1 (N = 74) and 2 (N = 788) recruited Japanese participants, while Experiment 3 (N = 500) comprised American participants. There were two conditions: in the first, participants competed against an AI opponent and in the other, they believed they were competing against a human. The results of the three experiments showed that participants attributed the loss to their own and their opponent's abilities more than any other factor, irrespective of the opponent type. The number of participants choosing to re-challenge the game did not differ significantly between the AI and human conditions in Experiments 1 and 3, although the number was lower in the AI condition than in the human condition in Experiment 2. Besides providing fresh insight on how people make causal attributions when competing against AI, our findings also predict how people will respond after their jobs are replaced by AI. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-021-02559-w.